Life is our spiritual Journey back Home. I have been blessed along the way. The Blue Hills Diary was originally created in 1998 after an astounding solitary retreat back to my nurturing source—those Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia along the Appalachian Trail. The lyrical style of this, my story, was born out of an exceedingly delightful hypomanic episode allowing me to write as my heart and soul inspired me. I was 46 years old when I first wrote this memoir. Today, as I write these words, I am just shy of 60.

As this story unfolds, it reveals deeper and deeper layers of mystical experience. From as far back as I can remember, something greater than me called me to come forth and communicate my findings. The Journey Home is about seeking and finding; and seeking some more. The Blue Hills Diary stops short of telling the reader how to find and what is found. The story tells about the seeking and the questions that arise to encourage it.

The Blue Hills Diary is written in five parts: each with a number of short vignettes or lyrical prose chapters born out of a prevailing theme. The prevailing themes are based on inspirations from the timeless I Ching or Book of Changes, the ancient Chinese oracle. For example, topics include Traveling, Advancement, the Source, Before the End, and so on as initial impressions for the vignette that follows. As I wrote my interpretation of the individual I Ching impressions for each of the chapters, I let my soul soar to my very Source outward and inward and was often amazed at what returned to me to write. During those intense times, which lasted no more than three months, I was simply taking dictation from my higher creative Self connected to the Source.
This story is about Life and how it shapes, sculpts and directs a person; constantly offering the siren’s call toward Its desire for completion. My earliest recollections are brought forth from about the age of three or four… a time when I recall witnessing something unworldly and not being able to express it to my parents or friends. As a result, I wondered for years whether I was the only sentient being on earth. In addition, I have experienced something that touches me from lives not actively lived at this time, but remembrances nonetheless. They came bubbling to the surface when I was on my retreat hiking in the mountains those two days. On that same hike, I discovered the magnificent secret of the Universe—animated or not, we are all connected. Everything is necessary and everything is connected. And then there was the Butterfly Tree Island, where there were hundreds of iridescent blue violet butterflies with me on a sunny clear day on an island in the middle of the Tye River, lazing slightly downstream of Half-Moon Bridge. Blue Hills Diary is the story of experience, raw experience, and how a few days away from the everyday transported me into transcendental realms of Being.

Since this book was first created, I have undergone many new experiences. Being a Journey, life never stands still. My dear husband, Ed passed away the day before Thanksgiving and two days before our 15th wedding anniversary in 2005. My mentor, Dr. (hon.) Rhea A. White, who taught me to honor all my life experiences (including the mystical and psychical ones), passed away in February of 2007. Rhea, the founder of the Exceptional Human Experience (EHE) Network provided a safe haven for people who had experienced the odd, the unusual, anomalous and even otherworldly experiences. For her, and later for me who joined her in developing the EHE Network adventure, it was not so much as proving our experiences, but tapping into how our EHEs change our worldview. In addition, after the completion of the earliest drafts of Blue Hills Diary, I underwent two extreme manic episodes that left me institutionalized for short 48-72 hour bursts of time and fearful of more episodes. Not sacrificing one drop of life, but rather finally gaining all that life has to offer, I have taken my medicine ever since. At the same time, I began to recover from daily alcoholic self medication binges for they were killing me and have been totally alcohol free since 2003.

Blue Hills Diary is written for those who are keenly connected to Life in all Its levels and manifestations. It is meant to strike a chord and resonate with other sensitive souls who perceive, even intuit the world beyond the common everyday surface. For some of us, it took a few bouts of mental illness to wake up those deeper and wider otherworldly realms. For others, admission was paid by intense suffering or great joy or a sudden shock to the psyche from one or more inexplicable exceptional experience(s). For me, it took all of the above in order to grow, to accept, even honor my experiences of all types and learn to embrace them. This book is dedicated to everyone who has ever sought to find, to re-member and Know their source—it is the story of our re-calling.
I would like to give special thanks to my dear friends and colleagues who read early drafts of this book and actually walked with me during its formation: Nancymarie Jones and her son the author-philosopher Eric Webster first urged me to write about my experiences at Butterfly Tree Island in e-mails. Dick Richardson continues to encourage me to write for the generations to come and to never forget the legacy of Rhea’s gift of the EHE Network. An author in his own right, Dick’s living legacy as a mystic continues to grow with his personal Knowledge of the unfolding and evolution of the new wise human, Homo Ensophicus. I also thank Hillary Dumas for her particular love of this book’s lyrical style, including the deeper meanings of the vignettes, and the threads comprising reminiscences of my dear mother. I also am grateful to Dr. Joseph Felser who saw the early archetypal Journey of my story and to Dr. Steven Rosen who encouraged me in sharing the abstract, multidimensional levels of meaning for the reader to decipher.

Blue Hills Diary presages my descent into a full blown manic phase of manic-depression, or bipolar disorder as it is now called. It is the story of my Life’s Journey growing up as the offspring of two caring, yet undiagnosed alcoholic, manic-depressive parents. I am forever grateful for the gift of sensing the world through those larger lenses and not being afraid to intensely experience its deeper meanings and levels of awareness. Something moved me during those days and nights when I wrote this lyrical prose. Something was in need of expression then and it still is today. I was and still am now blessed.